A view of Panjshir province. Photo: Social Media

“We Live in Fear”: Life Under Taliban Rule in Panjshir

Life in Afghanistan’s northeastern Panjshir province has been anything but normal since the Taliban overtook power, imposing severe restrictions on civilian life. The group maintains a strict rule on freedom of movement, hindering civilians’ ability to attend to their day-to-day activities.

To visit a maternal hospital for a basic checkup earlier this month, a family in one of the Panjshir’s villages faced an uphill due to the Taliban’s night-time curfew. They had to call the village’s elder to obtain permission from the Taliban’s commander and even when the consent was granted, it was not easy to visit the hospital.

“As we were driving towards the hospital at midnight, our vehicle was stopped by pick-up trucks carrying Taliban gunmen,” Mahmood, whose name we have changed to protect his identity, told KabulNow about his family. “There were numerous checkpoints, one every few kilometers. They inspected us in detail about the purpose of our visit and if we had sought permission from authorities.”

Another resident KabulNow spoke with said these restrictions have “suffocated” civilians, with armed Taliban forces randomly stopping and harassing people at checkpoints.

“Despite much less traffic due to Taliban’s fear, people are worried,” 26-year-old Malik, whose home was raided by Taliban soldiers at one point, said. “The situation in the province, especially areas with heavy Taliban military presence, remains tense.”

Malik indicated that Taliban forces have arbitrarily detained, tortured, and killed residents of his village in Darah district, where mainly ethnic Hazaras live. The Taliban, he said, linked many of them to people from resistance forces who are fighting in the Panjshir’s mountaintops.

Panjshir province north of the capital Kabul has long been a resistance hub. File photo

Home to about 200,000 people, mostly ethnic Tajiks, the small mountainous province of Panjshir north of Kabul has historically been a bastion of resistance—defying the Soviet invasion in the 1980s and the Taliban in the 1990s, when the group first ruled the country. It was the last province to hold out against the Taliban as they swept through Afghanistan in summer 2021.

The Taliban has since vowed to counter any resistance that threatens its rule.

“To consolidate its power, the Taliban have created night-time curfews, subjecting locals to abuse, intimidation, and coercion. Those who defy the Taliban’s harsh rules will in the worst case be tortured or killed.”

“They [Taliban soldiers] killed two young members of my uncle’s family accusing them of collaborating with the National Resistance Front (NRF) after confiscating their phones at a checkpoint,” Malik told KabulNow. “They are inhumane, brutal, without mercy.”

Another resident witnessed Taliban fighters beating two members of his family outside their home until they passed out.

The NRF, which mainly rose out of the last remnants of Afghanistan’s shattered security forces, is a principal anti-Taliban armed group led by Ahmad Massoud, son of the jihadi commander Ahmad Shah Massoud who fought against the Taliban during the group’s first stint in power.

The resistance group, reportedly numbering in the thousands, has vowed to resist the Taliban after they overran the country and seized power in August 2021 as U.S. and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war.

In recent months, the Taliban opposition groups have intensified their guerrilla attacks against the regime in power mainly in the northern and northeastern provinces, including Kabul. In its annual report, NRF claimed that between March 2023 and March 2024, its fighters had killed and injured over 400 Taliban members.

Another anti-Taliban group, the Afghanistan Freedom Front, has also engaged in armed clashes with the Taliban. The group has claimed to have killed and injured dozens of Taliban members in Kabul, Parwan, Baghlan, Kunduz, and Badakhshan provinces.

Taliban members standing in front of the gate of the Panjshir provincial governor’s compound. Photo via social media

The Taliban have only escalated its retaliation against opposition groups and those the group accuses of collaborating with NRF.

Three people in the valley also shared Malik’s sentiment. Taliban’s restrictions, these residents said, threaten people’s access to mobility and livelihoods, amid a devastating humanitarian and economic crisis across Afghanistan.

“To consolidate its power, the Taliban have created night-time curfews, subjecting locals to abuse, intimidation, and coercion,” one of the residents told us on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “Those who defy the Taliban’s harsh rules will in the worst case be tortured or killed.”

Nasir Ahmad, a young man in Abshar district’s Gulab Khel village, was shot to death by Taliban soldiers without any charges while he was heading toward his home, locals told one of KabulNow’s reporters who recently visited the province. But Ahmad’s case is not an isolated one.

“The Taliban control the mountains. They are everywhere.”

Rights groups say the list of war crimes committed by the Taliban in Panjshir is extensive which includes torture and other ill-treatment, extrajudicial executions, hostage-taking, burning of civilian homes, and arbitrary deprivation of liberty.

“Over the past two years, the Taliban has repeatedly sent troops to Panjshir, launching operations to suppress the NRF,” Amnesty International said in a report last year. “The Taliban in Panjshir stands accused of “shooting prisoners, arbitrary arrests, torture, and the targeted killing of civilians.”

Human Rights Watch also accused the Taliban of imposing collective punishment in the province with impunity.

The Taliban deny their forces have abused civilians in the valley.

The National Resistance Front (NRF) is a principal anti-Taliban armed group with Panjshir as its stronghold. Photo: NRF

Agnès Callamard, Secretary-General of Amnesty International, said that the Taliban’s cruel tactic of targeting civilians due to suspicion of their affiliation with the NRF is causing widespread misery and fear. “Thousands of people are being swept up in the Taliban’s continued oppression, which is clearly intended to intimidate and punish. The Taliban’s deliberate targeting of civilians in Panjshir must stop immediately,” she added.

The detention of Panjshiris has even continued in Kabul, where they predominantly inhabit the northern parts of the capital. Their houses have been searched several times, including in recent months and young men have been taken by the regime without specific charges or the prospects of any due process.

In a bid to assert their control over Panjshir, the Taliban have also forced residents to sell their properties and leave their villages. Locals are not allowed to graze their flocks on the pastures or go to their agricultural areas without prior permission from Taliban authorities.

The Taliban have also occupied residential areas, schools, and mosques converting them into military bases and detention centers within populated civilian areas in the province.

A resident in Panjshir’s center bazaar accounted to KabulNow that Taliban forces detained and thrashed four civilians in the Badqol area when they had gone to the mountains to collect grass to feed their cattle. “The Taliban control the mountains. They are everywhere,” he said.

Another valley villager told KabulNow that the Taliban are not allowing people to take their cattle in the high pasture and have limited their access to farmland for irrigation or collecting harvest, which will endanger their livelihood and survival.

“In these rural areas, people rely on agriculture and traditional cattle grazing, but the Taliban have made life extremely difficult for civilians,” he said, adding that “even those who go about their daily lives without any bother to the Taliban forces are impacted.”

Taliban fighters in a pickup truck in Panjshir. Photo: Mahdi Marizad/Fars

In addition to these restrictions, the Taliban have occupied residential areas, schools, and mosques converting them into military bases and detention centers within populated civilian areas in the province.

In the Nawlech area in Panjshir’s center, the Taliban occupied Abdul Satar’s home, local sources told KabulNow, adding that 500 km farther in Mallespa village, Haji Sayeed’s residential place, a businessman, and a guesthouse belonging to Gulistan Sediq, the provincial head of security directorate under the previous government, were turned into military barricades by the Taliban.

Around 30 Taliban forces from the group’s Ministry of Defence have been stationed in each of these residential areas, sources said. They are armed with heavy weapons, armored vehicles, and military equipment left behind by the United States.

Rights groups say that civilians in Panjshir have suffered serious human rights violations under Taliban rule with no accountability.

In Khenj district, the Taliban have held houses belonging to Marshal Qasim Fahim, former vice president in the Karzai administration, ex-military general Habel, and Haji Kateb, sources mentioned.

In the Hesa-e-Awal district, Taliban forces set explosive devices inside a school. They set it on fire after locals demanded they leave the building which the group had been using as a military base.

In its report, Amnesty International has highlighted that civilians have suffered serious human rights violations under Taliban rule with no accountability. The lack of a credible internal infrastructure for accountability, it says, poses a significant risk of evidence destruction concerning these crimes.

“Those who have faced atrocities in Panjshir, and indeed all victims of Taliban crimes committed in Afghanistan, deserve an end to impunity and a clear road to justice, truth, and reparations,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.

Callamard called for an independent international accountability mechanism with a focus on the collection and preservation of evidence to hold the perpetrators accountable.

This piece was originally published by Etilaatroz in Farsi with additional reporting from KabulNow.